I was listening to Sunbather again this morning, and as I’ve said since first hearing the thing, it’s gonna be my No. 1 album of 2013, no contest. The race for No. 2, though, is pretty tight — but if the year were to end today, Windhand’s incredible forthcoming sophomore album Soma would take home those honors. As I wrote about the album’s lead single, “Woodbine,” in a recent 5 Best Songs Of The Week:

Within one second, “Woodbine” has leveled everything in its immediate vicinity, and it spends the next nine minutes crushing everything else. The guitars have the mass of mountains, and from those heights, riffs descend with the inescapable force of an avalanche. Frontwoman Dorthia Cottrell delivers resin-sticky melodies in spacey, spectral gusts, while the rhythm section just blasts forward, not slowly, but inexorably, in long, powerful strides.

Today, though, the band has made available the album’s opening song, “Orchard” — and while the above description totally applies here, too, for my money “Orchard” is an even better song than “Woodbine.” Listen.